If you are reading this then you have probably “googled” something like “cheap xbox live subscriptions”.  Well that is what I did and I came across a UK based site called live-codes.com.  At first I was a little dubious as I am with all things that appear to good to be true so I asked around and found no negative comments anywhere (there is a good reason for that).

Let me tell you what I know about the site.  They are a UK based Limited company with a genuine registered office (not just a mailbox).  They use Google checkout so you can rest assured that they are not going to run off with your money and their support staff were available to answer my email within minutes at 10.30pm.

I had done my digging and researched the company before purchasing and decided to take the plunge and purchased a 12 month X-Box live subscription card for the fantastic price of £28.99.  Google Checkout was an absolute pleasure to use as I already have a gmail account and felt the transaction went smoother than most other online payment gateways from the largest corporations.

So at 10:22 I completed the transaction and in the time it took to open a new tab and press home the code was sat in my inbox.  It wasnt just an email with the numbers typed in it was an actual scan of the subscription card, I’m guessing they do this to reduce the possibility of problems should anything go wrong.  So as you can imagine I am over the moon at the speed my card was delivered I then entered the code into my X-Box and within seconds my Live account was refreshed for another 12 months.  I was so happy with the transaction I thought it would be nice to email them via their contact us form and tell them how impressed I was.  Within 5 minutes a very helpful person from live-codes.com had responded.  It wasn’t an automated response but a real human who replied to my every single compliment, this is something that will keep me going back time and time again.

It is very rare for an online retailer to have such an affect on me, I am still gobsmacked at the speed and reliablity of the service I recieved!

Now I know what you are all thinking, £28.99 is not as cheap as some of the Power Sellers on the evil Ebay.  This can be true however I have been burnt in the past ordering from a very trusted UK power seller who had 100% feedback.  It is also worth remembering that Ebay have changed their protection policy, so no longer are digitaly delivered items such as subscription codes covered by their buyer protection scheme.  So if you get sold a code that doesnt work then you have no protection whatsoever and will end up having to pay double to get your fix of online gaming.  Im not saying that every seller on Ebay is going to rip you off but in the current economic climate can you afford to take that risk?

I will be using live-codes.com again and will be more than happy to recommend them to friends and family, I suggest you do the same.

This is a snippet of the email that I recieved from them tonight:

We like to operate where; if you are pleased with our service you spread the word to friends and where you found our site (i.e forum etc). The site is fully automated so as soon as the payment is clear codes are emailed out immediately 24/7. We only ever deal in scanned cards, this avoids any typing mistakes and we feel scanned images gives confidence to the customer.

I think I should also add that it is not only X-Box live subscriptions that they sell, they also have Microsoft Points, Nintendo Points & World of Warcraft subscriptions and add-ons.

Go and check them out I guarantee you will not be disappointed!

Just look at the times of these emails!

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Live-Codes.com: http://www.live-codes.com/
Google Checkout: http://www.google.com/
Ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/

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A helping hand, Gaming stuff, Online shopping cheap, cheap subscriptions, codes, ebay, Gaming stuff, help, live, live-codes, microsft, microsoft, microsoft points, ms points, trustworthy, www.live-codes.com, xbox, xbox live

Have Ebay’s recent changes increased the chances of dvd, cd and game piracy?

Well they certainly haven’t helped the fight against piracy, read on for my reasons why.

I am an avid gamer who tries to purchase new titles on or around the release date, normally paying top dollar for them.  I will play the game to completion and then jump online with it and make the decision to keep it or trade it.  Once upon a time I would take it to my local game shop and get a fair trade in price and swap it for something else and would continue to do so until I get a game that I will want to keep.  Now the major stores (Game & Gamestation) have lowered the trade in value of games so dramatically it just isn’t worth it, let me give you an example:  Silent Hill Home Coming on the 360, 2 weeks after release date I tried to trade it in and was offered £7 by Game and £12 by Gamestation.  They were selling the game for £39.99 new and £35.99 pre-owned, my copy was in pristine condition and was only 2 weeks old!

So the only alternative to get some money back from my games would be to stick them on Ebay.  Most of my new games I will put on with a buy it now price but I used to pick up older titles and would sell them on when I played them to completion.  This is not financially viable since Ebay ammended its postage fee’s on CDs, games and DVDs.

Again let me give you an example, I bought Disney’s Car’s a couple of years ago for £30 brand new.  It has been played a few times but both disc and box are in immaculate condition.  If I wanted to trade it in I would get £3 for it which is not very fair considering I have seen a tatty version selling in Game for £20 PRE-OWNED!!  So I would normally put it on Ebay with a starting bid of 99p knowing that if it didn’t sell for more than £3 I have still gained more due to the low fee’s and postage costs.  Now they have forced all users to sell games without being able to charge p&p, which means if the game only sell’s for £1 I would not make any money from the sale at all and in fact it would cost me about 50p!!!  Can you imagine giving someone 50p to take a game from you!

Now this got me thinking, I am now less inclined to buy brand new games because there is every chance that 6 months down the line when its trade in value is only £5 I can’t put it on an online auction because it could end up costing me money!!!

There will be other people in this position who won’t just stop buying as many games, they could start downloading the titles.  I love to own the boxes so pirating the games just isn’t an option for me but it will be for some people.  This is why I think that Ebay is not helping the industry fight piracy!

Everything else, Gaming stuff, Online shopping copyright theft, ebay, fees, no postage, piracy, postage charges removed, ripoff, scam, scammy

 If you are anything like me, organising things is a must in all aspects of life.  I think this is why I love Ebay selling so much, there is a lot of sorting out to do and organisation is needed.  I decided to make an Ebay profit/loss spreadsheet recentlty, it is a very simple little thing that made me happy because I can track how much I’m making or losing on postage and packing.  I created it using Microsoft Office 2007 and it is compatible with all earlier versions of Office.

The spreadsheet allows you to add your item, sale price, estimated postage cost and actual postage cost.  It will calculate how much you have gained or lost on postage, it will also calculate your overall profit or loss.

To download the .zip version Click Here

To download the .xls file Click Here

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A helping hand, Online shopping ebay, help, microsoft, spreadsheets, tutorials

Time for a little Ebay related stuff! (Updated)

I have recently developed a new love for the internet devil that is Ebay.  Having two young children who appear to be growing up at an almost unhuman rate I have quite a lot of stuff that they have outgrown, so I decided to stick it all on Ebay.

Whilst listing things on Ebay I noticed that the gallery listing charge had been removed so it now costs nothing to have an image along side your listing title in the search result pages.  Now this alone is all very nice but it still costs to have extra images within your listing, or does it.  After playing around with the html editor it would appear that the <img> tag has not been disabled, so providing you can host your images somewhere you can insert images within your listing and avoid paying the extra charges.

I am going to explain to you how you can use this to your advantage and make the best of this.  First you will need to upload your image(s) preferably to a site like Flickr.  Once the image is uploaded you need to get the true address of your image, there are a couple of ways you can do this but these are the easy options.  You can right click on the image then select “View Image” and copy the URL from the address bar.  Or you will need to press the “share it” link in the top right of Flickr and select Embed it then copy and paste the link it provides into a notepad, you will end up with something that looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/parassassin/2894613154/” title=”Ebay Description by parassassin, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3239/2894613154_31334664db.jpg” width=”500″ height=”313″ alt=”Ebay Description” /></a>

The true address for your image is highlighted in red it, just delete all the other text until you are left with:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3239/2894613154_31334664db.jpg

Click to see larger image.

Now it’s time to insert this URL into your ebay listing, now I could take you on a great html journey to explain everything you can do with it but for now Im just going to explain how to insert the image and float text next to it.  You will need to create your listing by choosing the Advanced Sell option, once you have completed all the fields you should begin your listing design.  First you should layout your listing as you would like it to appear by adding a title and/or a footer, once you have done this create a big space in the middle of your listing by pressing return a few times, you should end up with something that looks like the image displayed here.

Now you are ready to insert your image into your listing.  Click the html tab at the top of the editor, for someone who is new to html coding this may look a bit daunting but don’t worry as by creating a space in the middle of your listing you have created a reference point in the html code.  You should be able to see lots of <br> tags.  These are Line breaks, simply put they are the individual blank lines you created by pressing return.  Now it is time to add some html code to your image URL, I will be using some basic tags to get you started but these will do the trick quite nicely.  Below is the code you should enter in the middle of the <BR> tags in the Ebay editor, just don’t forget to add your image URL in between the inverted comma’s (” “)

<img src=”http://www.ENTER-YOUR-IMAGE-URL-HERE.COM” vspace=”6″ width=”200″ height=”200″ align=”left” border=”0″ hspace=”6″>

This will insert an image to the left of the page and will allow you to type to the right of it.  Once you have done this click the “Standard” tab on your Ebay editor and your image should be nicely displayed on the left of the page.  Then place your cursor to the right of your image an add your description, once you have done that you can remove the extra spaces above and below the image to tidy things up.  If you wish your image to display on the right just change “left to right”.  In fact every attribute can be changed in the above code to suit you.  After some playing around you will be creating Ebay listings full of images without paying the extra fee’s.

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A helping hand, Online shopping beat ebay fees, ebay, flickr, help, tutorials

This post all revolves round the simple task of buying a new washing machine, I say simple but the reality is much much different.

Back in March our washing machine finally gave up the ghost and could not be repaired so me and my partner decided to buy a new one.  We considered visiting our local electrical store but after searching online we found a wider choice of machine and started the online buying process.  We decided on a machine from what we thought was a trusted retailer and paid an extra £25 for next day delivery.  Our machine arrived and from the get go we were very happy with our machine, we had read many great reviews and the person we spoke to on the phone said it was a great washing machine.  About a week later I was in bed whilst my partner was doing some washing before coming to bed, I was woken by a blood curdling scream.  I dived out of bed thinking that something bad had happened, when I got downstairs my partner was clearly shaken but had a grin on her face so I knew it wasn’t anything life threatening.  The washing machine had just started it’s spin cycle and halfway through it started shaking violently.  It shook so much it threw itself about 4 foot into the middle of the kitchen.

So we phoned Comet the next day to ask if someone could come and take this death trap out of our house and replace it.  I spoke to a very friendly advisor who said that it was company policy to send an engineer out before authorising a replacement.  I told her that I would not be happy having the same machine as this fault could have been very serious had my 1 year old been in the kitchen when it happened.  She informed me that once the engineer had seen the machine he would issue a code number so that we could get a replacement machine sent out.  4 days later the engineer came out to look at the machine and informed us that the fault was caused by its stability mechanism failing.  The drum had in fact thrown itself off its mountings at 1600rpm, the engineer said that in his 10 years of washing machine repair work he had never seen it happen.

Anyway back to the lovely customer rep, I explained to her that it was going to be problem being without a machine for nearly 2 weeks (waiting for repair man then ordering a new one).  She suggested that once the engineer has visited I phone them back to get the exchange authorisation number, then I should visit my local store and choose a new machine to speed things up a bit.  So we ventured online and found another great machine at a great price, with the added bonus of having a further 15% off the price.  Unfortunately the machine was out of stock for home delivery. So we checked the stock levels in our local store and rushed to comet to grab the last one in stock.  We arrived at the store and noticed that the machine was much more expensive, the store manager explained that we were incorrectly informed that our online discount and delivery charges could be used in store.

When I got home I phoned comet to explain what had just happened and another very helpful customer service rep came up with a solution.  She said that she could order the machine from our local store and use it as a delivery platform so we could get it delivered next day.  This sounds very confusing but she explained that the online stock is totally separate to the in-store stock but because we had paid extra for the special delivery she would reserve the in-store machine and send the delivery driver to the store to pick it up and deliver it directly to us.  This sounded great and I was left feeling very happy at the outcome, that was until the next day no machine arrived.

The next day I phoned comet to find out what was going on and they told me that no order had been made and the last one in my local store was sold the night before.  Another friendly rep then suggested we choose another machine whilst I was on the phone with him and he would personally put the order through himself.  So we found another machine £20 more than we had originally spent but the rep said he would refund the delivery charge and give us next day delivery for free.  I asked the rep to ensure that this order was made and he stated that he had done it himself and it was definitely been ordered.  The next day came and went but still no washing machine.  So I phoned comet again and spoke to someone who told me that no order had been made, so yet again following another hour on hold I spoke to someone who said I should make another order.  I once again looked online to find a washing machine and found a similar spec’d machine but this one was £40 more than the last, I asked if I could get a further discount due to the f**k up’s they had made.  I was told that I was getting free next day delivery so I should be happy, so the order was yet again placed and I was told that my machine would be delivered before 12pm the next day.

At this point I was at breaking point so I phoned to complain about the problems, after 40 minutes on hold I was put through to the customer service supervisor who assured me that the order was made and this incident would be investigated.  I asked her if she could guarantee that my order was made and I was getting my machine the next day and she stated “Yes I will personally ensure that this order is made correctly and you WILL receive your washing machine before 12pm tomorrow”.

Guess what…… No machine the next day, so once again I phoned them and once again I was put on hold for about an hour whilst they tried to trace the source of these f**k ups.  They decided to place the blame with some poor soul in the stock ordering department and transfered me directly to the people who process the orders.  I ordered my new washing machine and paid the extra and was told it could not be delivered the next day as the delivery drivers “are not allowed to collect anything on weekends” WTF????

So Monday arrived and finally I got my washing machine, it is a very nice machine which we are happy with.  I am just unhappy by the way comet has treated me and has profited from the errors that they made.  Feeling much calmer I phoned head office to complain once again about being lied to by many of its staff and to complain about the person who I complained to the first time.  Their response was just great, “I’m sorry you have already made a complaint so we are unable to accept another one from you” WTF????

So customers be warned if you do decide to buy from comet make sure that you only have one complaint because you aren’t allowed to complain about more than one thing.  Just makes me think that comet are just stuck up their own Uranus.

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Online shopping candy, comet, hotpoint, sucks, washing machine